A 25-year-old Santa Cruz man was sentenced Thursday to two years in state prison for driving drunk and hitting a cyclist in March.

Patrick Giles Hart pleaded to several charges, including felony drunken driving and misdemeanors for possession of drug paraphernalia and driving with a suspended license.

Hart was driving on Market Street on the evening of March 30 when his car drifted to the right and struck a bicycle ridden by a 23-year-old Santa Cruz man. The cyclist was flipped onto the car's windshield and he was flown to a trauma center for treatment.

PLEASURE POINT

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Accidental fire hits mobile home

A woman was displaced from her mobile home on 38th Avenue Wednesday morning after an accidental fire, Central firefighters reported.

A manager at Opal Cliffs Mobile Home Park at 890 38th Ave. noticed smoke coming from a window of the home about 9:10 a.m., said Central Fire spokesman Mike DeMars. The manager called 911.

Firefighters arrived and found a fire on top of a dresser near a wall. They searched the home and did not find anyone.

Firefighters doused the blaze and contained it in about 10 minutes, DeMars said.

The woman who lived there later returned to the home from walking her dog. She is a smoker, but firefighters received conflicting information about what was on the dresser.

Firefighters did not determine the cause of the blaze but called it accidental, DeMars said.

The woman lived in the home alone. No one was injured.

DeMars said the dresser and part of a wall behind it were burned.

Firefighters deemed the home uninhabitable. The American Red Cross provided temporary housing.

A monetary damage estimate has not been determined.

WATSONVILLE

Driver crashes in to home

A car crashed in to a home and cut a gas meter Wednesday afternoon near West Beach Street and Ohlone Parkway in Watsonville.

About 2:25 p.m., the driver hit the side of a single-story house then fled, Watsonville Fire Capt. John Martorella said.

Police have not said if the driver was found or the cause of the collision.

No one in the home was injured in the crash, Martorella said. Firefighters shut off the gas line. A PG&E Co. crew arrived and fixed the meter.

SCOTTS VALLEY

Traffic light outage snarls traffic

A traffic light outage on the 200 block of Mount Hermon Road is being blamed for a significant traffic backup Thursday afternoon.

Scotts Valley police dispatcher Keith Tyndall said the light, near the CVS pharmacy and Kmart, went out around 2 p.m. and snarled traffic for five hours. He said the department received word of a transformer blowing about 2 p.m.

Tyndall said he didn't know precisely how many customers were affected by the outage, which affected parts of Glenwood Drive, Glen Canyon Road, Scotts Valley Drive and Highway 17, among others.

Monica Tell, a spokeswoman for PG&E, said that as of late Thursday afternoon, she only knew of one customer still being affected by the outage.

Parts of Santa Cruz and La Selva Beach also experienced brief power outages Thursday afternoon but Tell said those were planned outages and customers had been alerted beforehand.

SANTA CRUZ

Man in bike crash remains in hospital

A 21-year-old Santa Cruz man who crashed a bicycle near Walnut Avenue and California Street Sept. 21 remained at San Jose Regional Medical Center on Thursday, hospital officials said.

He was in an intensive care unit but his condition was not released.

The man had been riding south on Walnut when he lost control, flipped over the bike's handlebars and struck the road, said Santa Cruz police Lt. Larry Richard.

A truck on northbound Walnut Avenue had turned left onto California Street prior to the crash but they did not collide, police said. The cyclist was taken by helicopter to the hospital.